Macoto Takahashi – Shoujo Dream – Friday Faves

Aimee loves Macoto Takahashi!

For this Friday Fave I want to show you the romantic work of Macoto Takahashi ( 高橋真琴 ) from Osaka, Japan. His website is here. He was a major artist during the 50’s and 60’s shoujo romance period (what we today look at lovingly as retro shoujo style.) A lot of people rediscovered him when he did some artwork in the 2000’s for the Gothic & Lolita Bible fashion magazines.

I know some people don’t like the big sparkly-eyed look of this sort of style, but I find once you get used to it there is real beauty. I love the appealing shapes that Macoto uses on his clothing and hair and I love the stylized shapes used for flowers and backgrounds as well. Instead of just drawing a flower how it looks, each flower and wave and hill is a thoughtful shape. His work reminds me a bit of Edwin Earle (the background artist of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty) or Mary Blair in some ways.

Look how sensitively done this Little Mermaid is!

I love the clothing shapes on this Snow Queen art and look at the charming hanging plants outside the window. Macoto obviously researches clothing some too. I don’t think they are straight up historical, but I like the touches of actual clothing to them.

I have these two Macoto books (above and below) that I bought off Amazon.jp. One is pink hardcover book with Cinderella in an 18th century gown on the cover. It is a general collection of some illustrations from various fairytales. It’s actually still available for it’s original price on Amazon.jp here. The other has blue cover with the Little Mermaid, ISBN4-8354-4089-7 now out of print. It originally was 4900 yen. This one is actually a collected box of five softcover fairy tale books; Snow White, Thumbelina, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and the Little Mermaid.